Body Politics

York Graduate Center, Room 121

As clinicians, we need to be prepared to help clients deconstruct how their bodies have been storied. This includes raising awareness of, and challenging, the impact of societal and relational power dynamics. These dynamics impact not only our inner dialog, but the everyday realities of our lives.

This course explores how we evaluate our bodies through the lens of “unidentified others,” as well as the lived experience and consequences of looks privilege and discrimination.

Participants will consider liberation-based counseling practices to counter the objectification, commodification, power and gendering of bodies in late capitalist societies. The focus of this course is to raise awareness of body politics in the clinical practice and creating opportunities for change through individual and relational wellbeing.

*Please note: Completed registration forms containing social security numbers and/or credit card information should not be submitted via email. If you choose to pay by credit card, please mail or fax your registration to the Center for Community Engagement, using the contact information on the right-hand side of this webpage.

About the Instructor

Teresa McDowell, EdD is a professor and chair of the Department of Counseling Psychology in the Graduate School of Education and Counseling at Lewis & Clark College. Teresa has spent much of her career working to re-envision marriage and family therapy education in ways that better support social equity and cultural democracy. Her scholarship has focused on issues of race and social class in family therapy practice and education, critical multicultural family research, and internationalizing family therapy programs. Recently her research agenda has included expanding critical multiculturalism in family therapy to include an international focus that addresses disparity and promotes global citizenship. She is a long time clinical member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) and an AAMFT Approved Supervisor.